Abilities are the offensive and defensive capabilities of the heroes in Overwatch. Normal abilities are accessed via keybinds which can be swapped based on player preference in Game Options. Abilities help to differentiate roles from one another, as well as heroes from one another within roles.

Damage is a sweeping role used to contain heroes that dealing a very large amount of damage per second. Prior to their combination into this single category, damage heroes were previously one of two types:

Offense heroes generally have higher damage weapons and abilities than tanks and some defense heroes. They are usually excellent duelists with high mobility and good burst or sustained damage.

Defense heroes may have long range weapons or the ability to create turrets, and excel at area denial.

Tank heroes protect allies, disrupt enemies, and occupy the front line. They have abilities that protect themselves and others with shields and crowd control.

Contents

Ability types

In this page, abilities are unofficially classified into multiple categories; an ability can belong to several categories. This is the list of categories and their brief explanation:

Ranged abilities: abilities which belong to this category are capable of taking effect at range.

Melee abilities: abilities which belong to this category are capable of taking effect within short range, mainly through the use of weapons.

Movement ability: abilities which belong to this category provide hero a method to move to another location beside walking.

Barrier abilities: abilities which belong to this category evoke the use of barrier.

Healing abilities: abilities which belong to this category can be used to replenish health.

Buff/debuff abilities: abilities which belong to this category can be used to provide an advantage for self/teammates or a disadvantage for enemies.

Crowd-control abilities: abilities which belong to this category can be used to affect the movement or ability usage of enemies.

Area-of-effect abilities: abilities which belong to this category affect multiple targets within a specified area.

Ranged abilties

Ranged abilities are abilities capable of taking effect at range, either through launching a projectile or through generating an effect at a specified location.

Most ranged abilities are referred to as being either hitscans or projectiles.

A hitscan ability has no travel time, and will hit a target within the shooter's crosshair as soon as the weapon/ability fires.

A projectile ability has a travel time, and will hit a target only if the projectile collides with the target.

Damage falloff is the damage deterioration inflicted on distant target. An ability with damage falloff does less damage the further the shooter is away from the target. Due to the difficulty of timing a long-distance projectile headshot, some weapons suffer reduced or no damage falloff.

Ranged abiltities also come with two other attributes: headshot and falloff damage. An ability can have both attributes, or have neither:

A headshot is any shot that successfully hits the enemy's critical points, the name coming from this typically being the head. Each headshot deals 2 times the damage of a bodyshot, the sole exception being 2.5 times for Widowmaker's scoped headshot. When a headshot is made a red X mark will glow in the crosshair and a unique hit noise will be made.

The location of the critical headshot spot is not always the head due to the nature of different heroes. Exceptions include:

↑Reinhardt's Earthshatter is not technically a projectile ability, but it will take a small amount of time to travel. Nonetheless, the further enemies will have more chance to avoid the attack.

Melee abilities

For a type of melee that almost all heroes can perform, see Quick Melee.

Melee abilities are abilities that take effect only within a short range of the hero using the ability, generally within arms' reach of the hero's position. Some melee abilities allow hero to move and attack at the same time, making those abilities a perfect choice to make a follow-up attack or escape.

Almost all heroes can use melee in the form of Quick Melee, except for Reinhardt, Torbjörn (when holding Forge Hammer), Genji and Winston (when using their Ultimate abilities).

Wrecking Ball's Grappling Hook (when hitting a player while attached to an object).

Movement abilities

Movement abilities are abilities which improve movement for a hero. This includes: increasing the speed at which a hero moves to a location, giving a hero an alternate path to a location, or letting a hero move to a location which is inaccessible through walking. Some movement abilities have additional perks such as dealing damage to enemies. By default, every hero's movement speed is 5.5 m/s, with the exception of Genji and Tracer, who both move at 6.0 m/s. The abilities listed below are considered movement abilities, and are disabled by Steel Trap and Graviton Surge.

Unorthodox movement abilities

Some abilities are able to improve movement in unorthodox ways, such as increasing jump height by self-damage. These abilities are capable of improving movement in unorthodox methods:

Junkrat's Concussion Mine (pushes players away from the mine; can be used to give Junkrat a super jump if detonated when he is on top of it).

Mei's Ice Wall (can be used to elevate players by building the wall underneath them).

Pharah's Concussive Blast (horizontally pushes players away from point of contact; can be used to give Pharah a horizontal movement boost).

"Rocket Jump"

With certain abilities, if a hero faces the ground and presses both the jump button and the ability button simultaneously, they can use the knockback from the ability to increase their jump height. This is a common tactic in games with explosives and is dubbed "rocket jump" by the gaming community. All of these abilities will cause self-damage. The abilities listed below can be used to perform a rocket jump:

Barrier abilities

Barrier abilities are abilities which create a translucent barrier in a certain area. Barriers block all incoming enemy damage and allow all friendly damage to pass through them. The abilities listed below are considered barrier abilities:

Crowd Control abilities

For more details on crowd control abilities and associated abilities, see Crowd control.

Crowd control abilities are abilities which reduce, restrict, or prevent movement, as well as usage of weapons and/or abilities. Crowd control also includes displacement of enemy positions such as knockback. Some abilities use debuffs to crowd control. Orisa's Fortify ability makes her immune to all the crowd control effects of the abilities. Abilities which hamper the user's movement but don't have other crowd control traits are not considered crowd control abilities. The abilities listed below are considered crowd control abilities.

Area-of-effect abilities

Area of effect (AoE) abilities are abilities which can affect multiple targets within a specified area. The affected area can be on the path of the projectile or in the surrounding zone of a hero or the point of contact. Some AoE abilities may harm the user if they are in the effect area. The abilities listed below are considered AoE abilities:

See also

Patch changes

November 15, 2016Patch:Dealing damage to things other than players (like Torbjörn's turret or Symmetra's teleporter) no longer charges ultimate abilities.

September 1, 2016Patch:Ultimates that consume the ultimate meter when activated will now drain the meter more quickly (.25 second instead of 1 second). Reverted a recent change that reduced the size of heroes' projectiles. Most hero abilities will no longer interrupt quick melee attacks. Ultimate abilities will now interrupt quick melee attacks.

July 19, 2016Patch:Reduced the chance for larger projectiles to hit targets around corners. Self-healing abilities now charge ultimate abilities.

June 28, 2016Patch:Fixed a bug that would cause players’ weapons to auto-snap straight up or down when the crosshair was aimed between 85 and 90 degrees. Fixed a bug that would move players toward the source of a knockback rather than away from it.

March 22, 2016 (beta)Patch:It is no longer possible for some AoE weapons to deal damage to an enemy player if that player is on the other side of wall they’re partially clipping into. Ultimate charge should no longer reset whenever a player selects a different hero and then cancels while dead.

February 9, 2016 (beta)Patch:Ammo will now reload in the middle of a weapon's reload animation, instead of at the end of it.